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Importance of preserving tradition
Why are traditions important essay
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One’s background can influence how they view the rest of the world. A direct connection to a homeland can give once confident in themselves and their heritage. So even when they have traveled to or permanently moved to a new country, they are able to hold on to their traditions and cultures without any shame. They see natives of the new country and their traditions/cultures as strange and unusual, cause them to chose to view them as outcasts, or “ghosts.” However, the “ghost” concept can be taken a different way, especially by the immigrant’s children. At home, they are exposed to the traditions and cultures of their families’ homeland. Their parents would be very confident about their heritage and press their children to have the same feelings for their homeland. Not only do children, especially teenagers, dislike being told what to do, they would not feel as deep a connect to their families’ homeland because they did not grow up there. In society, whether in school or work, the children of immigrants also often feel outcasted. Because of their families’ strong heritage, the chil...
Differences present between immigrant and non-immigrant families in terms of opportunity, social inclusion and cultural acceptance is a prominent issue in the world today. In the novel, Brother, David Chariandy shows how these inconsistencies affect the opportunities present for second-generation migrants. Francis, Michael and Aisha are all children of migrants residing in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough or “Scar-Bro” as Michael refers to it (Chariandy). This suburb is home to immigrants of colour struggling to raise families on minimum wage jobs and the institutional racism present. This essay will first examine how the opportunity of second generation migrants is affected due to the preconceived idea of what opportunity is from the first
For immigrants, reuniting with parents who left them is a huge problem in the U.S. Children who reunite with their parents after many years have a lot of problems with the parents. The parents and children tend to argue, the children have buried anger, and both have an idealized concept of each other. According to Los Angeles’s Newcomer School, a school for newly arrived immigrants which is referenced in Enrique’s Journey, a bit more than half of want to talk to the counselor about their problems. The main problem Murillo, the school’s counselor, says is mostly family problems. Murillo says that many parent-child meetings are all very similar and identical to each other. Some of the similarities are that idealized notions of each other disappear, children felt bitter before going to the U.S., and that many children have buried rage. Mothers say that the separations between them and child was worth it because of the money earned and the advantages in America. However, many children said that they would rather have less money and food if it meant their mothers would stay with them.
The autobiography Journey of Hope Memoirs of a Mexican Girl and the documentary short “Children in No Man’s Land” has brought into light three important topics that are results of immigration. The first is the “American dream” and the notion of yearning to migrate abroad to seek dreams formed by misconceptions of the limited knowledge one has of their destination. The second is assimilation and the process of assimilating oneself to their new homeland. The third is a unique situation presented in both these works, which is estrangement from their family members. This paper attempts to critically analyze the unique journey of immigration for Rosalina, Maria de Jesus, and Rene. It argues that glorified images and dreams of what America could be like falsely creates a sense of hope. It focuses on the dual task of reviewing the process of assimilation based on each immigrant situation, and an examination of familial estrangement as
Most people want to feel like they fit in, but for refugees and immigrants, that feeling was even more important. “Young refugees and immigrants... were caught between the world of their parents and the new world of their friends and schoolmates” (105) and had to choose whether they would vie for the approval of their peers or their family. One young boy on the Fugees soccer team refused to cut his hair because his peers thought it was cool, and ended up being kicked off the team (111). Other young refugees in Clarkston gave in to the allure of gangs, and ended up in a cycle of violence and crime, just for a sense of belonging and safety. “Gangs… promised both belonging and status”(105) and provided a way to become American, despite all the trouble and anguish they put their members in. As adolescents between worlds, young immigrants experience a heightened sense of liminality, when a person “becomes neither here nor there” (221), and struggle with finding out who they are and where they
Furthermore, the land given from the Dawes Act to the Native Americans still continued to be watched over by the army, where Native American’s culture was not to be expressed. According to, “Wage Work in the Sacred Circle: The Ghost Dance as Modern Religion” by Louis S. Warren, the article examines Native American’s use of the ghost dance and how the American viewed these behaviors. Warren writes, “the army had been in charges with suppressing the religion among the [Native tribes].” The only religion acceptable was Christianity, nothing more, nothing less. America refused to understand the native culture, but decided that eliminating the culture is considered an easier route. It’s easier to eliminate than to adopt an idea. The best way America
Moving from the unpleasant life in the old country to America is a glorious moment for an immigrant family that is highlighted and told by many personal accounts over the course of history. Many people write about the long boat ride, seeing The Statue of Liberty and the “golden” lined streets of New York City and how it brought them hope and comfort that they too could be successful in American and make it their home. Few authors tend to highlight the social and political developments that they encountered in the new world and how it affected people’s identity and the community that they lived in. Authors from the literature that we read in class highlight these developments in the world around them, more particularly the struggles of assimilating
When the school day came to an end, I would feel a nervous sensation as I waited to see if one of parents was standing on the other side of the school gate. From the conversations I heard amongst adults to the news I saw on TV, I knew that the possibility of never seeing my parents again existed. No one gave me a clear explanation of what was currently happening, but I was aware of one thing -- what the term “deportation” meant.
Family dynamics present interesting revelations, especially regarding the relationship between parents and children. While most families undoubtedly encounter dysfunction at some point throughout life, immigrant families seemingly experience such stress continually. A handful of short stories, including “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, “Who’s irish” by Gish Jen, and “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” by Yiyun Li, demonstrate how strained relations erupt in immigrant families. Familial tension noticeably arises because of the immigrant parents’ inability to fully adjust to the American way of life. Further, immigrant parents adhere to strict expectations in an attempt to uphold the family’s conservative heritage. Finally, immigrant parents typically
The subject of this paper is Liz, a 52-year old, 1.5 generation female immigrant from Hong Kong. What this means is that she immigrated to the United States when she was a child, around 7-years old (Feliciano Lec. 1/4/2016 -. As a child of a family that consists of five siblings and two parents that did not speak any English prior to immigrating, the focus of this paper will be on the legal processes that the family went through to become legal immigrants and the various factors that aided in her path towards assimilation. Liz’s family is from a city called Kow Loon in Hong Kong.
I am not a child of immigrants, but maintaining one’s culture is a universal struggle in a land far from one’s ethnic origins. Lahiri suggests that without cultural connections such as family and friends, one’s culture can simply vanish if they are not in the land of ethnic origin. I have found this to be true within my own
Something that has always fascinated me is the confrontation with a completely different culture. We do not have to travel far to realize that people really lead different lives in other countries and that the saying "Home sweet home" often applies to most of us. What if we suddenly had to leave our homes and settle somewhere else, somewhere where other values and beliefs where common and where people spoke a different language? Would we still try to hang on to the 'old home' by speaking our mother tongue, practising our own religion and culture or would we give in to the new and exciting country and forget our past? And what would it be like for our children, and their children? In Identity Lessons - Contemporary Writing About Learning to Be American I found many different stories telling us what it is like to be "trapped" between two cultures. In this short essay I aim to show that belonging to two cultures can be very confusing.
In the short story “The Danish Way of Life”, author Jamie Gullen, who is a native of New York City spent several months in Copenhagen. She went expecting Copenhagen to be similar culturally to the United States only to find she had a lot to learn about herself and about this new country. In another short story called “Where Are You From?” the author Patricia Park, also a native of New York City, but the daughter of Korean immigrants, also traveled to another country, Korea. She went expecting to find Korea to be the way her parents had described it. The “motherland” as she explained, was a family myth. Although both of these authors grew up in the same city, of the same country, they had two different experiences when
Developing a face within a new environment is challenging. Which in many cases can be a result in an identity crisis, which is defined to be, a period of uncertainty and confusion in which a person's sense of identity becomes insecure, typically due to a change in their expected aims or role in society. Although the move to America is for a positive gain there are also some negative effects inflicted upon the lives of immigrants. Being faced discrimination, possibilities of poverty and broken homes immigrants still make the decision to place themselves self in subsequent societies. Melissa L. Curtin stresses the sensitivities of “Coculturation: Toward A Critical Theoretical Framework of Cultural Adjustment” as well as highlighting the discourses of assimilation and theories of coculturation/acculturation.
Oftentimes the children of immigrants to the United States lose the sense of cultural background in which their parents had tried so desperately to instill within them. According to Walter Shear, “It is an unseen terror that runs through both the distinct social spectrum experienced by the mothers in China and the lack of such social definition in the daughters’ lives.” This “unseen terror” is portrayed in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club as four Chinese women and their American-born daughters struggle to understand one another’s culture and values. The second-generation women in The Joy Luck Club prove to lose their sense of Chinese values, becoming Americanized.
Furthermore, people have the urge to better themselves by becoming educated. In doing so they tend to move from one place of residence to another for a variety of reasons. Such as for greener pastures, a sense of adventure, and in the case of some African nations it is because of frustration, as a result of deliberating economy, and others just want to change their lifestyle. However, people tend to struggle when it comes to being culturally fit. Everyone wants to fit in and look the part when it comes to how we dress, look, act, talk and even walk. Culture defines us and defines who you are as a person. Those characteristics are the way people are perceived when it comes to their culture and personality.